When a bug is not a bug: An introduction to the computer science academic vocabulary list

In this commentary, we begin with the discussion on a brief history of academic wordlists. Adopting a comparative perspective, then, the merits and demerits of the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) and its competing counterpart the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) (Gardner & Davies, 2014) are presented. We also explore whether the AWL can still be considered as “the best list” (Nation, 2001, p. 12) for improving academic words, or whether its counterpart is reasonably “the most current, accurate, and comprehensive list” (Gardner & Davies, 2014, p. 325). The comparison was made in terms of twelve aspects: corpus size, types of corpus texts, sources of corpus texts, text balance, disciplines included, counting unit, wordlist items, method for excluding highfrequency words, minimum frequency, method for excluding technical words, sequence of list items and lexical coverage. The comparison reveals that the AVL is far from complete and cannot replace the AWL. The results of the comparison can have implications for practitioners and course developers.

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Bringing the Academic Vocabulary List into the Classroom: Student Lexical Investigations

Knowledge Mobilization in ◽

10.1163/9789004392472_006 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 76-93

Keyword(s):

Academic Vocabulary ◽

Vocabulary List

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The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) coverage in the Brazilian academic written English corpus

BELT – Brazilian English Language Teaching Journal ◽

10.15448/2178-3640.2018.1.31989 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 146 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Larissa Goulart

Keyword(s):

Word List ◽

English For Academic Purposes ◽

Academic Vocabulary ◽

Word Lists ◽

Brazilian Students ◽

Vocabulary List

This paper is divided in two parts, in the first one we address the different definitions of academic vocabulary, the role of academic vocabulary in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teaching, and present some of the academic word lists compiled up to the present day. The second part of this paper is dedicated to one of the applications of these word lists: to determine the vocabulary profile of a corpus. Hence, the investigation conducted relies on the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) to determine the use of academic vocabulary in a corpus of Brazilian students. It also addresses the issue of the different coverage provided by the AVL and the Academic Word List (AWL). The results indicate that the AVL is more representative of academic vocabulary in the corpus used as a reference.

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